Nvidia has announced the Nvidia Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot, an open humanoid robot platform designed to accelerate research and development in physical AI and general-purpose robotics. Unveiled at Nvidia GTC Taipei, the platform combines a Unitree H2 Plus humanoid robot, Sharpa Wave tactile five-finger hands, Nvidia Jetson Thor onboard computing, and the Isaac GR00T software stack into a single reference design.
Key takeaways
- The platform integrates a Unitree H2 humanoid with 31 degrees of freedom, dual Sharpa Wave tactile hands with 22 degrees of freedom each, and Nvidia Jetson AGX Thor computing powered by a Blackwell GPU.
- It aims to streamline the fragmented workflow of hardware integration, data collection, simulation, AI training, and real-world deployment.
- The Isaac GR00T ecosystem includes Isaac Teleop for data collection, Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab for simulation and training, Isaac ROS middleware, and open foundation models for humanoid behavior development.
- Support for the Unitree G1 humanoid will extend access to a broader research community.
- Research institutions including Ai2, ETH Zurich, Stanford Robotics Center, and UC San Diego have committed to using the platform.
The reference design is expected to be available from Unitree in late 2026, providing researchers with an open, standardized platform to advance humanoid robotics and physical AI.
Source: Robotics & Automation News (roboticsandautomationnews.com) · Published 2026-06-11 · “Nvidia unveils open humanoid robot platform for robotics research”